


Christmas Isn't Christmas 'Til You Get Here

by loving-the-stars-themselves (youandmeotp)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Mistletoe, This is less meaningless cuteness and more wow they're meant to be, Whouffaldi Secret Santa 2017, might add more tags later?, some emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 13:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13147359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youandmeotp/pseuds/loving-the-stars-themselves
Summary: After not having seen the Doctor in a year, Clara assumes she'll be spending this Christmas alone. With no friends and no family to turn to, she isn't feeling the Christmas spirit. She tries to cheer herself up, but nothing works, until...





	Christmas Isn't Christmas 'Til You Get Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PonderingTheUniverse17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PonderingTheUniverse17/gifts).



> First off, merry Christmas, Taylor! I hope you enjoy your gift for the Whouffaldi Secret Santa, and that you've had a wonderful holiday. I certainly enjoyed writing this for you.  
>   
> Secondly, I have no idea where this fits in with canon, haha. My advice is to not think too hard about it. Everything should be explained adequately in the text.
> 
> Third, this was originally inspired by a Kylie Minogue song, but it really didn't keep the tone of the song or anything beyond the title. C'est la vie with writing, I suppose.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy! Let me know what you think!

Clara is tired of hearing Christmas songs on the radio. With less than a week left until the big day, it seems she can’t get away from them. At this point in the year, she would usually have all her sparkly decorations up, and would gladly be rocking around her Christmas tree, wearing one of her many warm, cozy jumpers. It’s not that she doesn’t like Christmas. It’s just that this year, the Christmas feeling hasn’t come.

See, the warm voices on the radio sing to her about the joys of spending the holiday with your friends and family. She hasn’t got anyone to spend it with. Except him.

She’s told herself not to get her hopes up. Of course the Doctor would be doing bigger and better things on Christmas than spending a day in with her. And she should have other things to do, too. She has a life here on Earth, doesn’t she? Even if she no longer has a boyfriend. Even if her family no longer wants to see her. She has...coworkers, some of whom are pleasant. Or she could meet someone at a bar…

_Ugh, is this what my life has come to?_

When she turns on her car, going out to run some errands, the radio comes on automatically. _“I’ll be home for Christmas, you can count on me,_ ” Bing Crosby croons. Clara groans and smacks the power button.

She returns an hour later with a single shopping bag, containing a turkey, potatoes, brussels sprouts, and Yorkshire pudding in the smallest quantities she could find, but it’s still too much for just her. She’ll probably have leftovers for a week. She had intended on cooking herself a Christmas dinner as a final shot at getting herself in the holiday spirit, but now she realizes it’s just going to end up being a pity party. She doesn’t want to imagine herself sitting alone at her dining room table with platefuls of food and no one to share with.

As she’s putting everything away in her refrigerator, she hears the doorbell ring. Momentarily, her heart soars. _Could it be him?_ She can’t stop the thought from crossing her mind. But then she hears the jingle bells, and a cheerful call of “Christmas carols!” Her face falls, and she halfheartedly keeps putting the groceries away, ignoring the persistent knocks that follow. Eventually they leave, and she stands in front of the open refrigerator, staring off into space. Now that she’s finished that, she doesn’t know what else to do.

She pulls out a book. _Sense and Sensibility,_ her guilty pleasure. She has reread it far too many times, and she could probably recite the whole book from memory if she had to. In times like these, the words of Jane Austen become her best friend. Clara can depend on them to speak to her if no one else takes the time.

She spends the next three days curled up on the couch in her pajamas, making her way through the whole top row of her bookcase. All the books are books she’s read before, from Jane Austen and other classics to newer but still equally valuable novels. She curses herself for being such a fast reader, although maybe it’s just a function of her knowing the stories so well already. Either way, she’s going through the books much too quickly. Christmas isn’t passing soon enough.

Finally, it’s Christmas Eve. She wouldn’t have even known if she hadn’t glanced at her phone and seen the date; she’s completely lost track of time. Her heart sinks a little, and she wishes she hadn’t seen. The illusion upheld by her make-believe narratives is gone, and she realizes how alone she truly is. She sighs loudly and puts down her phone, going back to the book even though its magic is gone.

But then she hears it. A whooshing sound, coming from outside. She lowers her eyebrows, convinced it must be her imagination, and determined to keep reading, no matter how her heart is racing. But the noise persists, growing louder and louder, until she is forced to get up and see what’s going on.

She drops the book on the sofa and rushes to the front door. She flings it open and the chill hits her like a wall of bricks. Her bare feet are not happy to be in such close contact with the frigid brick. She clings to the door frame as the TARDIS materializes before her, breathing hard. God, what will she say? What _can_ she say, after all this time? Will he even want to see her? Why did he come?

After an agonizing few seconds, the Doctor’s head pops out the TARDIS door, and Clara gasps. The Doctor doesn’t even seem to see her, his attention focused on brushing away the snow that had accumulated on the TARDIS’s front windows. Clara marvels at this silently; it isn’t even snowing where she lives, but somehow he has managed to bring it with him.

Clara waits a moment, growing increasingly unsure he even purposely came here. He hasn’t even looked up, and has now moved on to brushing off the door handles. Clara clears her throat loudly, and at last he glances her way.

“Just a moment...there,” he says, having completed his work to his satisfaction. Then, at last, he looks at her, really looks at her. She stands nervously on her doorstep, rocking from foot to foot so neither one freezes too quickly. “Clara,” he says warmly, crossing the distance between them.

She looks bewildered, wide eyes growing even wider in disbelief that he is walking toward her, just like he always did. “Doctor?” she squeaks out.

He stands at the bottom of the steps, hands spread and a grin on his face as if to say, _Ta-da, it’s me, I’m here._

Clara is grasping at straws, trying to find something to say. Her mouth has fallen open, and the grin has faded from his face, his hands dropping to his sides. “You’ve blocked the path,” she finally musters.

The Doctor glances back. “It appears I have,” he agrees. “Do you want me to—?” He gestures back at his machine, looking around for a better place to park.

“Leave it,” Clara interrupts. Her mouth is dry. He looks just like he used to, and it makes her heart skip a beat. The same silvery hair fluffed by the wind. The same black coat with the red lining, the one she used to slip her hands inside when she hugged him. The same eyes, betraying the increasing age he would always try to hide. She wants to draw him closer, but she can’t bring herself to.

The Doctor, sensing that something is wrong, climbs up the stairs until they are face to face, he still a couple of steps below her. “It...it is Christmas, isn’t it?” he asks, as if that were the problem.

“Christmas Eve,” she says, not for once second breaking her gaze into his eyes.

“I was beginning to worry I’d got it wrong,” he says. “There are no lights up or anything.” Clara doesn’t need to look at the bare facade of her house to know what he’s talking about. Compared to the rest of the houses in the neighborhood, whose gleam frames the Doctor’s slender form, hers looks dreary and bland.

He scans her face, looking for something to give him a clue as to why she isn’t reaching out to him, but he finds nothing. “Do you want to come in?” Clara eventually offers, and he follows her inside.

Clara guides him into the living room as if it’s completely normal that he’s in her house. _Just like old times,_ she thinks to herself. She hopes he doesn’t notice the books strewn across the table.

He sits down on the sofa, her abode for the past few days. It looks as though he’s trying to get comfortable, trying to pretend that this is normal, but he ends up just sinking so far down into the cushions that he looks like he’s being swallowed up. Swallowed whole by the awkwardness.

Leaning down to light a fire in the fireplace, Clara tries to keep up a conversation. “How have you been?” she asks. “Fighting monsters and saving lives?” The Doctor can hear the perky smile in her voice, but he isn’t convinced.

Still, he tries to keep the mood light. “Of course,” he replies. “You know me. Last week I paid a visit to an ice kingdom that had been overrun with Emperor penguins. It was some issue pertaining to their national currency. I ended up ushering them all out into a snowbank,” he says, chuckling at his own pun. Clara rolls her eyes fondly as she continues to struggle with the match. She almost forgot how clever he always thinks he is.

“And how about you?” he asks. “What have you been up to, here on Earth?”

Clara ignores the sting of his words, the way it sounds like he’s left her behind. She doesn’t think he really wants to know about the humdrum details of her mundane life. “Oh, you know,” she says, “having adventures of my own.” It’s a white lie, but it’s the best she can do.

“Good, good,” the Doctor responds, nodding. “I wouldn’t expect any less from my Clara.”

A few minutes later, the fire is glowing, and Clara has returned with two mugs of tea in hand. She hands one to the Doctor and settles down beside him. The Doctor notices that when she sits, she leaves about a foot of space between them, space that she normally would obliterate without a second thought.

Clara, too, is hyper-aware of the emptiness between them. She wills herself to move closer, but is as if they are two identical magnets, north end to north end, repelling each other just enough that they both feel the strain. She takes a sip of her tea and it scalds her tongue, so she sets it aside, pushing the books out of the way to create a place for the mug.

“Doctor,” she breaks the silence. “Why are you here?”

“It’s Christmas. Where else would I be?”

“Christmas Eve,” Clara reminds him. “It’s just...we haven’t even seen each other since last Christmas.”

The Doctor lowers his eyebrows. “Haven’t we?” he asks. He racks his brain for a memory of them together in the past year, but the timelines are so jumbled that he can’t find one.

Clara sighs. “No. We haven’t.”

“Ah,” the Doctor says, nodding slowly. “I see.”

“Yeah.”

“Well...I wanted to see you,” he answers. Clara exhales, realizing for the first time that she’d been holding her breath. Just hearing him say it provides her with some sort of relief, and the Doctor can sense how she relaxes beside him.

But Clara doesn’t completely let her guard down. She has more questions. “Why now?”

The Doctor’s eyes smile, even if the rest of his face does not. “Look around, Clara. What do you see?” She sees her books strewn across every flat surface, framed photographs of her family gathering a layer of dust, and an indentation of herself on the sofa. Melancholy peeling from the wallpaper. “No one deserves to be alone on Christmas.”

Clara’s eyebrows curl upwards in disbelief. Has he really come all this way just to make sure she isn’t alone?

The Doctor doesn’t say anything more in reply, but then their relationship had always been one of things left unsaid. He doesn’t need to say how he wishes he hadn’t left her for a whole year. He doesn’t need to say how he longs for the adventures they had together, the shared laughter and even the occasional embrace. After everything they’ve been through, she already knows how much he cares for her, even if he doesn’t say it outright.

Third question. “Do you know what happened? With my family?” Clara says this quietly, reluctant to dredge up painful memories for herself.

To this, the Doctor raises his eyebrows. _He doesn’t know,_ Clara realizes. She’s not sure whether this is good or bad. Either way, it means she has to explain.

She looks into his eyes. “They stopped talking to me. More than a year ago. Said I was too distant, they couldn’t deal with trying to support me while I was only half there. Not that I care, really—”

“Clara…”

“No, really, it’s no bother. I should’ve expected it. When they’re around, they want to be the center of attention, and I clearly wasn’t giving them that. I was distracted, all the time, really, with...well, you know.”

“Clara,” the Doctor breaks in, more insistently.

“No, Doctor, please just let me say this. The truth is, I was throwing myself into being with you. Everyone back home noticed, and they slowly faded out of my life, because I was fading out of theirs. And I hardly even noticed at the time, until they gave me a call saying I could ‘talk to them when I was ready.’ And I haven’t been ready.” Clara shakes her head as she says this. She’s never said it out loud before, and now the words hang in the air in front of her, stuck.

She continues after a moment. “Even when you stopped coming by, I kept hoping you’d reappear. I kept hoping that my life could still be mad and wonderful like it used to be. I...I thought about you more than I thought about them, and I felt horrible about it for a while, but that’s just it. It was only a while.”

The Doctor isn’t sure if he knows what she means by this, but from the looks of it, she means it in earnest. He can’t help but give a small smile. This is the Clara he knew so well, so real in a way he hasn’t quite worked out. It’s been a year for her, and although he has no way of telling how long it’s been for himself, he knows he’s missed her. He’s missed her in his bones, his Impossible Girl. Impossible and so, so real. He doesn’t know how he’s lived without her.

Clara has finished talking, spilling out all the details of her family conundrum that had been holed up inside her for so long. Now she just looks at him, face filled with something akin to hope. Hope, or nostalgia for a time when she dared to have it. Both cause her heart to swell almost uncomfortably in her chest.

“So what do you say, Doctor? I know you’re not generally the one to ask for advice about people, but I just need to know… Is it worth it, that I waited for you?”

The Doctor can’t help but cup the round curve of her face in his palm. “Only you can decide what something’s worth,” he tells her, while inside he wants to scream, _Yes, Clara, I don’t ever want to let you go again!_

But of course, Clara knows this. She’s always been so much like him that she knows what he’s thinking. His hand slips down to her shoulder, then down to hold her hands where they rest on her leg.

Clara doesn’t reply. Instead, she scoots in closer, finding the power to close the gap, and rests her head on his chest. It was just the way they’d sat together so many times. When she speaks again, after a minute or two of silent coexistence, she doesn’t turn to look at him. “You don’t have to tell me why you left, you know, or where you’ve been. Just be here with me now.”

“That I can do.”

The Doctor runs his fingers through her hair, and suddenly he has a nice thought. He peers upwards, moving only his eyes, to confirm his suspicion. “Look up,” he says to Clara, turning her shoulders for an easier angle.

Clara turns her face toward the ceiling. “Mistletoe?” she says incredulously. “How did that get there? You saw, I didn’t even deco—”

“It must be,” he says, eyes twinkling, “a little bit of Christmas magic.”

Clara smiles as their lips come together, and she settles into him easily because he’s home to her no matter where they are. The Doctor holds her closer than he’s allowed himself to hold anyone, lately. Together they’re braver than they are apart, and it’s a feeling that invigorates the both of them.

When they pull apart, Clara sits a little taller than she had before. The room seems brighter. Before they can dissolve into an inevitable mess of tongues and teeth and touching, she stands up. “I went grocery shopping, if you’re hungry. I bought stuff for Christmas dinner, but it’s way too much, and I can’t possibly finish it on my own, but maybe if we start some of it tonight we have a better chance.”

The Doctor grins sheepishly and shrugs, standing up as well. “I’m all for better chances,” he says, pulling her in for another quick kiss. “Happy Christmas, Clara.”

“Happy Christmas Eve,” she reminds him. But finally, _finally,_ it does feel like Christmas after all.


End file.
